7 ms·

Techno-skeptics’ objection growing louder

58 points by Jerry2 11y ago

incompatible 11y ago
Um what, you can have an iphone and laptop but you are a "digital dissenter" because you haven't upgraded the iphone recently?
- incompatible 11y ago
  I suppose I misinterpret "digital dissenter" as somebody who doesn't use digital equipment, which isn't really what the article is about.
  - joshu 11y ago
    I agree. I don't upgrade my phone because the one I have is fine. It isn't a political statement, though.
  - 0fx 11y ago
    I would also note that "digital dissenter" is not a term that Taylor applies to herself. A(n admittedly cursory) Google search seems to suggest that it was made up by the article's author.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
themartorana 11y ago
"If I only had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won." [0] I do have trouble not feeing apathetic. I want to cover my laptop camera, but I don't want duct tape on my equipment! (Nor one branded "Rand Paul.") I know planned obsolescence is maddening (my iPad 1 is as good a paper-weight as anything) but I love crunchy new technology! I would love a decentralized Internet, but the one we have right now took a long time to get to where it is. Am I really ready to start from scratch? (Probably not, in the end...) Snowden made this stuff scary for sure, but I'd rather learn to properly encrypt the Internet we have. Maybe I'm part of the problem? [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQeIzGu6hQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQeIzGu6hQ
- nickff 11y ago
  The evolution of iPads over multiple generations is not 'planned obsolescence' (PO), and this article is wrong to characterise this progress as PO.[1] PO denotes 'artificially limited useful life', whereas products like iPads and iPhones are replaced because of actual obsolescence or wear on consumable components. Most capacitors have a limited life in terms of time and charge/discharge cycles, and will degrade in performance over time; batteries are the same. Since no one wants their iPads to be overbuilt, (i.e. heavier and more expensive), they wear out over the course of just a few years. In addition to that, everyone will want higher resolution and more powerful tablets than are currently available; these consumers would rather buy a modern tablet now and another later than wait for the second to come out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    "actual obsolescence" The iPad? Really? I'm typing this on a netbook that cost 280 dollars five years ago. Everything sill works. It does all the same jobs it did years ago. There is absolutely no reason a device as expensive as an iPad shouldn't work for a decade or more. PO can include external factors. Does apple continue to manufacture spare parts? If no, have they released the designs so that others can produce them? If not, then this is a case of PO even if the devices themselves have not been built to fail.
    - nickff 11y ago
      I am currently on my third (or maybe fourth) iPhone, and every one was replaced for multiple reasons. The headphone jacks are only good for a few thousand insertions, the batteries get worn out, the internal components start to fail, and the buttons get mushy/broken. In addition to this, sometimes people drop them, and the screen cracks. The processors, ram, and solid state memory get out-of date, and make the product feel 'slower' and less pleasant to use than newer devices. In this environment, is it worth it to make spare parts and replaceable components? Which components would you make re-usable? On one corner of the desk that I am currently using, there sits an old aluminum 13.3" Macbook with a replaceable battery. I never replaced the battery because the laptop got dinged up, old, and slow, so the effort and resources that went into making the battery replaceable were wasted. Getting rid of 'serviceability' is often worth it.
lkrubner 11y ago
About this: "Taylor is a 21st-century digital dissenter. She’s one of the many technophiles unhappy about the way the tech revolution has played out. Political progressives once embraced the utopian promise of the Internet as a democratizing force, but they’ve been dismayed by the rise of the “surveillance state,” and the near-monopolization of digital platforms by huge corporations." I recall many years ago I would sometimes write comments at places like Slashdot. And I recall pointing out that so long as governments have armies that can find ways to be repressive. I recall being down modded as if I was some kind of irrational troll. At that time, and in those forums, the people who got upvoted were the ones who made the argument that the Internet could never be censored, because the Internet would route around censorship as if censorship was a form of network failure. During that era, a lot of people made some fairly naive libertarian/utopian arguments about the Internet was changing the world. Some people still make these arguments even now. There were some places (I'm thinking of places such as BoingBoing) where the utopian editorial tone was the only tone that was allowed. Places like BoingBoing have gotten much better at documenting the ways that governments are undermining the Internet, but many of these places started off denying that such undermining could ever happen. I am happy that these people finally revised their view of the world, though I wish the dangers had been more widely appreciated at an earlier date. The reality we face is now much as it has always been: there is no technological solution for repression. The only way to establish a free society is to mobilize and fight for it. That was true 2,500 years ago, when the Plebians were demanding fair treatment from the Roman upper classes, and it remains true today, and it will probably remain true for as long there is a species that you can recognize as homo sapien.
- tim333 11y ago
  OK there's no automatic technological solution for repression but the advance of tech probably helps overall. If you look at something like the polity data for democracy things seem to have gotten better since 1800 and I doubt human nature is that much different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series
endgame 11y ago
> They dream of a co-op model: people dealing directly with one another without having to go through a data-sucking corporate hub. We used to have this. Then GMail took over email, Facebook took over most people's communication, reddit replaced usenet and so on. We let the general masses sleepwalk into corporate data silos.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  notice how all of those ran over their own protocols and needed their own software. now its all http(s) and HTML/CSS/js inside a web browser. you may say the net not webbed. or maybe the cat that got out with the introduction of the micro/personal computer was stuffed back into the mainframe bag with the introduction of ajax.
- lunula 11y ago
  Email is still p2p, but it is true that it gets harder to run your own server all the time. Reddit is mostly publicly accessible, and run like some kind of low-profit community-directed social benefit corporation. But... It is increasingly infiltrated by marketing in subtle and frustrating ways. Maybe this is why it exists. Facebook, however, is just a nightmare. It gives us one thing we lacked before, which is a centralized identity service, and using that as leverage twists everyone's arm into joining and directing all communication through it. I can use any email server and talk with my friend on gmail. I can browse reddit anonymously. But facebook won't be satisfied until it owns my digital soul. We need tools. They will have companies behind them. So, we can't throw everything away. But, can we draw the line at the walled garden of Facebook? It is a bridge too far. It is the end of the internet. Please, don't give in. Write your friends. Call your mother. Email your baby photos. Post your videos where you get credit (even revenue!) for them. Remember that ten thousand years of humans went to parties, got laid, and had your ancestors without an event page that required a signup and login.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  That's not actually true. Home internet access affordable to non-business users has never included the necessary static IP address or upload bandwidth to run one's own servers, and has often included explicit prohibitions on such in the Terms of Service you sign to get service. Participating as a full peer on the internet has always been for the "business class".
Animats 11y ago
You can now get phones that don't break. Nokia was once the leader in that area. There are now good rugged smartphones.[1] I have a smartphone from Cat (yes, Caterpillar Tractor has a phone brand), and can drop it on cement repeatedly with zero damage, or wash it off with a hose.[2] Apple has been struggling in this area. Their sapphire screen debacle set them back on the ruggedness front.[3] They've made some progress on water resistance, but they're not at IP67 yet. [1] http://mobiloscope.net/en/hardware/smartphones/waterproof-rugged-smartphones-IP67-IP68.html http://mobiloscope.net/en/hardware/smartphones/waterproof-ru... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8 [3] http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7250941/the-inside-story-of-why-the-iphone-6-doesnt-have-a-sapphire-screen http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7250941/the-inside-story-...
- sandworm101 11y ago
  I don;t think anyone really wants a rugged iphone. The latest models are like delicate jewels, too thin and wide to be believed. Ruggedizing an iphone would be like ruggedizing a teacup poodle: it wouldn't be a teacup poodle anymore.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Except that people already buy iPhones just to stuff them into rugged cases (often sporting a window just for the logo).
  - Animats 11y ago
    Yes, there's the Bvlgari crowd. But they're not the primary customers for smartphones, even Apple's products.
microcolonel 11y ago
A cracked screen is not "planned obsolescence", it's bad procurement. If she wanted a device which wouldn't have that problem, she could easily get a less-dainty one. She could also protect it better. I recently let a smartphone go all the way to EOL (~5 years, not bad in my opinion). I don't see what these snoots are bragging about. If they don't want to use a device which is state-of-the-art, and don't want to pay for one which is durable, they'll get one which is old and broken. They do have options though.
joshu 11y ago
I wonder what platform these kids organize on?
andrewclunn 11y ago
Not really sure if people concerned about government / corporate spying are in the same category as those concerned about machines replacing people. I felt like the article jumped around a bit too much. Wanted it to go deeper rather than simply assume that the reader was already familiar with all the ideas present.
- 0fx 11y ago
  Agreed. There's a lot wrong with the article. It touched on mass surveillance, capitalism, government regulation, the gig economy and other issues without really tying them together in any coherent way. In addition, I wouldn't characterize someone who owns an iPhone and a laptop as a "digital dissenter" or a "techno-skeptic", but the story uses both of these terms to describe Taylor and some of the other subjects of the article. I think these are both poorly chosen terms that smack of Luddism and, unsurprisingly, Taylor & co. are likened to Luddites later in the article. The article itself suggests that an appropriate term for them might be "humanists", but I guess that wasn't as likely to get clicks as "techno-skeptics." I was also amused by the criticism of Lanier's idea of micropayments for content creators. The objection was that it might encourage people to record clickbait or "hey, y'all, hold my beer and watch THIS!" stunts, as if Youtube isn't already teeming with exactly that sort of content.
n0us 11y ago
It seems to me that the centralized internet has simply grown to be very popular because most people are indifferent to having their information stored in a centralized place. This has not precluded a decentralized internet from existing. (At least decentralized in the sense that it is not run by X mega tech company or NSA controlled.) You can run your own email server, you can run an irc server, we have tor, you can run a server out of your home and serve web pages or even run a reddit clone to organize like minded people. In a certain sense all of this is more accessible than ever. The problem that these people have is that as the internet grew, it expanded to the wider population of non-technical users who had no need or desire for the aforementioned technologies. They are perfectly fine with Facebook and Google and not knowing or caring how it works because that is good enough for them and censorship will likely never be a problem they will have to face. They don't mind the ads because for the most part they are relevant and the privacy invasion that more technically inclined users perceive has no real affect on their lives. The internet has not necessarily closed and centralized, it is just that the centralized closed portion of it has grown very popular while the rest has just stayed small and limited in its appeal.
refurb 11y ago
She says she’d like to see more government-supported media platforms — think public radio — and more robust regulations to keep digital powerhouses from becoming monopolies. Really? That's the solution? Have the organization that is trying to invade your privacy take over more of the communication methods?
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  It's a weird blind spot a lot of people have. As if a government agency whose budget depends on a perception of ever-bigger threats will be more reluctant to violate people's privacy than Facebook is, or a government agency run by a single political party will report the news more evenhandedly than Fox News does. Large bureaucracies don't magically become trustworthy just because you painted a flag on their side.
  - cowpig 11y ago
    > a government agency whose budget depends on a perception of ever-bigger threats will be more reluctant to violate people's privacy than Facebook What makes you think that a public ISP/whatever would rely on 'ever-bigger threats' for budget? As far as actual examples, I'm pretty confident in saying that some of the organizations that produce the highest-quality media content are publicly funded. NPR or the BBC are two examples that pop into my head.
    - jlarocco 11y ago
      > As far as actual examples, I'm pretty confident in saying that some of the organizations that produce the highest-quality media content are publicly funded. NPR or the BBC are two examples that pop into my head. That's a poor argument because it's simply your opinion and you're not giving any evidence to show your opinion is more valuable or more correct than anybody else's. I can claim the Criterion Collection represents the highest-quality media content ever released, and it's just as valid an opinion as yours.
      - RobertKerans 11y ago
Vexs 11y ago
> Astra Taylor’s iPhone has a cracked screen. She has bandaged it with clear packing tape and plans to use the phone until it disintegrates. She objects to the planned obsolescence of today’s gadgetry, and to the way the big tech companies pressure customers to upgrade. There's a lot of problems in the tech industry, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was a lot of planned obsolescence in hardware, but breaking a phone screen isn't planned obsolescence. That's you breaking a screen. People like to talk about their mother's grandmother's washing machine and how it never broke, but if you dropped it off a cliff it would break. Also, a couple things I've read on reddit that made me rethink my thoughts on planned obsolescence: It used to be that hardware engineers had to plan for errors in manufacturing, etc, and not knowing exactly how much stress this part would place on this part, and as such, had to over-engineer their products to make sure they would work. These days, we have CAD tools, and can almost exactly figure out how thick this particular piece can be to work, and exactly how strong that motor needs to be. Products aren't over-engineered anymore, and as such will fail sooner. Additionally, when your grandmother bought a washing machine, it might have cost a larger % of your income than now. If you scale the price of older machines, they're significantly more expensive than what we have now. Final note: You never hear about your grandmother's stuff that broke now, did you. You only saw the stuff that worked forever. As it stands, I'm actually really concerned about the direction modern technology is going, but at the same time, hopeful. It's easier than ever before for a young inventor to create something wonderful and make sure everyone has access to it. With the same power that allows them to get their ideas to everyone else, more malevolent powers can keep an ever-closer eye on everyone, and much easier.
- wycx 11y ago
  I have heard the following regarding you are describing re. manufacturing: "So much engineering effort has gone in to making this product just functional".
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    Or the old saying, "Any idiot can design a bridge that will stand up. Engineering is designing a bridge that will barely stand up."
MikeNomad 11y ago
In spirit, I am with the "digital dissenters." It is a shame that the term for what they are, luddites, has been corrupted, almost from the start... Luddites are individuals who are against the adoption of technology when it will destroy the connections individuals have with their family, friends, and community. Plenty of Kirkpatrick Sale, E.P. Thompson, etc. about for those who wish to dig deeper. However, in practical terms, I find the digital dissenter's mistrust to be somewhat misplaced. The technology does not set itself up in a women's restroom to take up-skirt video any more than a gun pulled its own trigger recently in San Bernardino. The soap box, jury box, and ballot box are all failing, in part because all the mistrust, anger, and energy are not being focused on creating substantial penalties for inappropriate use of the technology.
chadk 11y ago
Remember, it isn't just about planned obsolescence or the Web 2.0 centralization of everything. Read the books. Those are just the _symptoms_. All of these "digital dissenters" are not anti-technology... that is an oversimplification... many of them love tech (look at J-Lan!)... it is the underlying neoliberal political and economic system that _drives_ the current tech industry that they object to—aka. the California Ideology. That is what lies at the foundation of their criticism. Really surprised Evgeny Morozov isn't also tagged as a "digital dissenter" in this piece. Or Richard Stallman for that matter.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- digi_owl 11y ago
  RMS would probably resulted in a long rant about the inaccuracies of the term.
toadham 11y ago
I feel the arguments against old vs new tech or humanness vs automation are missing the point. A meaningful debate is the choice between supporting technologies that centralize power or those that distribute it. The notion that decisions are being made for the benefit of "machines" is nonsense. If that appears to be the case, it's likely for the benefit of those who control the machines. It's strange that free and open source software was not mentioned, since visionaries (albeit flawed) like RMS predicted the power shifts we see today.

58 points by Jerry2 11y ago

Um what, you can have an iphone and laptop but you are a "digital dissenter" because you haven't upgraded the iphone recently?

incompatible 11y ago
I suppose I misinterpret "digital dissenter" as somebody who doesn't use digital equipment, which isn't really what the article is about.
- joshu 11y ago
  I agree. I don't upgrade my phone because the one I have is fine. It isn't a political statement, though.
- 0fx 11y ago
  I would also note that "digital dissenter" is not a term that Taylor applies to herself. A(n admittedly cursory) Google search seems to suggest that it was made up by the article's author.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

themartorana 11y ago

"If I only had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won." [0] I do have trouble not feeing apathetic. I want to cover my laptop camera, but I don't want duct tape on my equipment! (Nor one branded "Rand Paul.") I know planned obsolescence is maddening (my iPad 1 is as good a paper-weight as anything) but I love crunchy new technology! I would love a decentralized Internet, but the one we have right now took a long time to get to where it is. Am I really ready to start from scratch? (Probably not, in the end...) Snowden made this stuff scary for sure, but I'd rather learn to properly encrypt the Internet we have. Maybe I'm part of the problem? [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQeIzGu6hQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQeIzGu6hQ

nickff 11y ago
The evolution of iPads over multiple generations is not 'planned obsolescence' (PO), and this article is wrong to characterise this progress as PO.[1] PO denotes 'artificially limited useful life', whereas products like iPads and iPhones are replaced because of actual obsolescence or wear on consumable components. Most capacitors have a limited life in terms of time and charge/discharge cycles, and will degrade in performance over time; batteries are the same. Since no one wants their iPads to be overbuilt, (i.e. heavier and more expensive), they wear out over the course of just a few years. In addition to that, everyone will want higher resolution and more powerful tablets than are currently available; these consumers would rather buy a modern tablet now and another later than wait for the second to come out. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- sandworm101 11y ago
  "actual obsolescence" The iPad? Really? I'm typing this on a netbook that cost 280 dollars five years ago. Everything sill works. It does all the same jobs it did years ago. There is absolutely no reason a device as expensive as an iPad shouldn't work for a decade or more. PO can include external factors. Does apple continue to manufacture spare parts? If no, have they released the designs so that others can produce them? If not, then this is a case of PO even if the devices themselves have not been built to fail.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I am currently on my third (or maybe fourth) iPhone, and every one was replaced for multiple reasons. The headphone jacks are only good for a few thousand insertions, the batteries get worn out, the internal components start to fail, and the buttons get mushy/broken. In addition to this, sometimes people drop them, and the screen cracks. The processors, ram, and solid state memory get out-of date, and make the product feel 'slower' and less pleasant to use than newer devices. In this environment, is it worth it to make spare parts and replaceable components? Which components would you make re-usable? On one corner of the desk that I am currently using, there sits an old aluminum 13.3" Macbook with a replaceable battery. I never replaced the battery because the laptop got dinged up, old, and slow, so the effort and resources that went into making the battery replaceable were wasted. Getting rid of 'serviceability' is often worth it.

lkrubner 11y ago

About this: "Taylor is a 21st-century digital dissenter. She’s one of the many technophiles unhappy about the way the tech revolution has played out. Political progressives once embraced the utopian promise of the Internet as a democratizing force, but they’ve been dismayed by the rise of the “surveillance state,” and the near-monopolization of digital platforms by huge corporations." I recall many years ago I would sometimes write comments at places like Slashdot. And I recall pointing out that so long as governments have armies that can find ways to be repressive. I recall being down modded as if I was some kind of irrational troll. At that time, and in those forums, the people who got upvoted were the ones who made the argument that the Internet could never be censored, because the Internet would route around censorship as if censorship was a form of network failure. During that era, a lot of people made some fairly naive libertarian/utopian arguments about the Internet was changing the world. Some people still make these arguments even now. There were some places (I'm thinking of places such as BoingBoing) where the utopian editorial tone was the only tone that was allowed. Places like BoingBoing have gotten much better at documenting the ways that governments are undermining the Internet, but many of these places started off denying that such undermining could ever happen. I am happy that these people finally revised their view of the world, though I wish the dangers had been more widely appreciated at an earlier date. The reality we face is now much as it has always been: there is no technological solution for repression. The only way to establish a free society is to mobilize and fight for it. That was true 2,500 years ago, when the Plebians were demanding fair treatment from the Roman upper classes, and it remains true today, and it will probably remain true for as long there is a species that you can recognize as homo sapien.

tim333 11y ago
OK there's no automatic technological solution for repression but the advance of tech probably helps overall. If you look at something like the polity data for democracy things seem to have gotten better since 1800 and I doubt human nature is that much different https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polity_data_series

endgame 11y ago

> They dream of a co-op model: people dealing directly with one another without having to go through a data-sucking corporate hub. We used to have this. Then GMail took over email, Facebook took over most people's communication, reddit replaced usenet and so on. We let the general masses sleepwalk into corporate data silos.

digi_owl 11y ago
notice how all of those ran over their own protocols and needed their own software. now its all http(s) and HTML/CSS/js inside a web browser. you may say the net not webbed. or maybe the cat that got out with the introduction of the micro/personal computer was stuffed back into the mainframe bag with the introduction of ajax.
lunula 11y ago
Email is still p2p, but it is true that it gets harder to run your own server all the time. Reddit is mostly publicly accessible, and run like some kind of low-profit community-directed social benefit corporation. But... It is increasingly infiltrated by marketing in subtle and frustrating ways. Maybe this is why it exists. Facebook, however, is just a nightmare. It gives us one thing we lacked before, which is a centralized identity service, and using that as leverage twists everyone's arm into joining and directing all communication through it. I can use any email server and talk with my friend on gmail. I can browse reddit anonymously. But facebook won't be satisfied until it owns my digital soul. We need tools. They will have companies behind them. So, we can't throw everything away. But, can we draw the line at the walled garden of Facebook? It is a bridge too far. It is the end of the internet. Please, don't give in. Write your friends. Call your mother. Email your baby photos. Post your videos where you get credit (even revenue!) for them. Remember that ten thousand years of humans went to parties, got laid, and had your ancestors without an event page that required a signup and login.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
That's not actually true. Home internet access affordable to non-business users has never included the necessary static IP address or upload bandwidth to run one's own servers, and has often included explicit prohibitions on such in the Terms of Service you sign to get service. Participating as a full peer on the internet has always been for the "business class".

Animats 11y ago

You can now get phones that don't break. Nokia was once the leader in that area. There are now good rugged smartphones.[1] I have a smartphone from Cat (yes, Caterpillar Tractor has a phone brand), and can drop it on cement repeatedly with zero damage, or wash it off with a hose.[2] Apple has been struggling in this area. Their sapphire screen debacle set them back on the ruggedness front.[3] They've made some progress on water resistance, but they're not at IP67 yet. [1] http://mobiloscope.net/en/hardware/smartphones/waterproof-rugged-smartphones-IP67-IP68.html http://mobiloscope.net/en/hardware/smartphones/waterproof-ru... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8 [3] http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7250941/the-inside-story-of-why-the-iphone-6-doesnt-have-a-sapphire-screen http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/19/7250941/the-inside-story-...

sandworm101 11y ago
I don;t think anyone really wants a rugged iphone. The latest models are like delicate jewels, too thin and wide to be believed. Ruggedizing an iphone would be like ruggedizing a teacup poodle: it wouldn't be a teacup poodle anymore.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Except that people already buy iPhones just to stuff them into rugged cases (often sporting a window just for the logo).
- Animats 11y ago
  Yes, there's the Bvlgari crowd. But they're not the primary customers for smartphones, even Apple's products.

microcolonel 11y ago

A cracked screen is not "planned obsolescence", it's bad procurement. If she wanted a device which wouldn't have that problem, she could easily get a less-dainty one. She could also protect it better. I recently let a smartphone go all the way to EOL (~5 years, not bad in my opinion). I don't see what these snoots are bragging about. If they don't want to use a device which is state-of-the-art, and don't want to pay for one which is durable, they'll get one which is old and broken. They do have options though.

joshu 11y ago

I wonder what platform these kids organize on?

andrewclunn 11y ago

Not really sure if people concerned about government / corporate spying are in the same category as those concerned about machines replacing people. I felt like the article jumped around a bit too much. Wanted it to go deeper rather than simply assume that the reader was already familiar with all the ideas present.

0fx 11y ago
Agreed. There's a lot wrong with the article. It touched on mass surveillance, capitalism, government regulation, the gig economy and other issues without really tying them together in any coherent way. In addition, I wouldn't characterize someone who owns an iPhone and a laptop as a "digital dissenter" or a "techno-skeptic", but the story uses both of these terms to describe Taylor and some of the other subjects of the article. I think these are both poorly chosen terms that smack of Luddism and, unsurprisingly, Taylor & co. are likened to Luddites later in the article. The article itself suggests that an appropriate term for them might be "humanists", but I guess that wasn't as likely to get clicks as "techno-skeptics." I was also amused by the criticism of Lanier's idea of micropayments for content creators. The objection was that it might encourage people to record clickbait or "hey, y'all, hold my beer and watch THIS!" stunts, as if Youtube isn't already teeming with exactly that sort of content.

n0us 11y ago

It seems to me that the centralized internet has simply grown to be very popular because most people are indifferent to having their information stored in a centralized place. This has not precluded a decentralized internet from existing. (At least decentralized in the sense that it is not run by X mega tech company or NSA controlled.) You can run your own email server, you can run an irc server, we have tor, you can run a server out of your home and serve web pages or even run a reddit clone to organize like minded people. In a certain sense all of this is more accessible than ever. The problem that these people have is that as the internet grew, it expanded to the wider population of non-technical users who had no need or desire for the aforementioned technologies. They are perfectly fine with Facebook and Google and not knowing or caring how it works because that is good enough for them and censorship will likely never be a problem they will have to face. They don't mind the ads because for the most part they are relevant and the privacy invasion that more technically inclined users perceive has no real affect on their lives. The internet has not necessarily closed and centralized, it is just that the centralized closed portion of it has grown very popular while the rest has just stayed small and limited in its appeal.

refurb 11y ago

She says she’d like to see more government-supported media platforms — think public radio — and more robust regulations to keep digital powerhouses from becoming monopolies. Really? That's the solution? Have the organization that is trying to invade your privacy take over more of the communication methods?

13thLetter 11y ago
It's a weird blind spot a lot of people have. As if a government agency whose budget depends on a perception of ever-bigger threats will be more reluctant to violate people's privacy than Facebook is, or a government agency run by a single political party will report the news more evenhandedly than Fox News does. Large bureaucracies don't magically become trustworthy just because you painted a flag on their side.
- cowpig 11y ago
  > a government agency whose budget depends on a perception of ever-bigger threats will be more reluctant to violate people's privacy than Facebook What makes you think that a public ISP/whatever would rely on 'ever-bigger threats' for budget? As far as actual examples, I'm pretty confident in saying that some of the organizations that produce the highest-quality media content are publicly funded. NPR or the BBC are two examples that pop into my head.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
    > As far as actual examples, I'm pretty confident in saying that some of the organizations that produce the highest-quality media content are publicly funded. NPR or the BBC are two examples that pop into my head. That's a poor argument because it's simply your opinion and you're not giving any evidence to show your opinion is more valuable or more correct than anybody else's. I can claim the Criterion Collection represents the highest-quality media content ever released, and it's just as valid an opinion as yours.
    - RobertKerans 11y ago

Vexs 11y ago

> Astra Taylor’s iPhone has a cracked screen. She has bandaged it with clear packing tape and plans to use the phone until it disintegrates. She objects to the planned obsolescence of today’s gadgetry, and to the way the big tech companies pressure customers to upgrade. There's a lot of problems in the tech industry, and I wouldn't be shocked if there was a lot of planned obsolescence in hardware, but breaking a phone screen isn't planned obsolescence. That's you breaking a screen. People like to talk about their mother's grandmother's washing machine and how it never broke, but if you dropped it off a cliff it would break. Also, a couple things I've read on reddit that made me rethink my thoughts on planned obsolescence: It used to be that hardware engineers had to plan for errors in manufacturing, etc, and not knowing exactly how much stress this part would place on this part, and as such, had to over-engineer their products to make sure they would work. These days, we have CAD tools, and can almost exactly figure out how thick this particular piece can be to work, and exactly how strong that motor needs to be. Products aren't over-engineered anymore, and as such will fail sooner. Additionally, when your grandmother bought a washing machine, it might have cost a larger % of your income than now. If you scale the price of older machines, they're significantly more expensive than what we have now. Final note: You never hear about your grandmother's stuff that broke now, did you. You only saw the stuff that worked forever. As it stands, I'm actually really concerned about the direction modern technology is going, but at the same time, hopeful. It's easier than ever before for a young inventor to create something wonderful and make sure everyone has access to it. With the same power that allows them to get their ideas to everyone else, more malevolent powers can keep an ever-closer eye on everyone, and much easier.

wycx 11y ago
I have heard the following regarding you are describing re. manufacturing: "So much engineering effort has gone in to making this product just functional".
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Or the old saying, "Any idiot can design a bridge that will stand up. Engineering is designing a bridge that will barely stand up."

MikeNomad 11y ago

In spirit, I am with the "digital dissenters." It is a shame that the term for what they are, luddites, has been corrupted, almost from the start... Luddites are individuals who are against the adoption of technology when it will destroy the connections individuals have with their family, friends, and community. Plenty of Kirkpatrick Sale, E.P. Thompson, etc. about for those who wish to dig deeper. However, in practical terms, I find the digital dissenter's mistrust to be somewhat misplaced. The technology does not set itself up in a women's restroom to take up-skirt video any more than a gun pulled its own trigger recently in San Bernardino. The soap box, jury box, and ballot box are all failing, in part because all the mistrust, anger, and energy are not being focused on creating substantial penalties for inappropriate use of the technology.

chadk 11y ago

Remember, it isn't just about planned obsolescence or the Web 2.0 centralization of everything. Read the books. Those are just the _symptoms_. All of these "digital dissenters" are not anti-technology... that is an oversimplification... many of them love tech (look at J-Lan!)... it is the underlying neoliberal political and economic system that _drives_ the current tech industry that they object to—aka. the California Ideology. That is what lies at the foundation of their criticism. Really surprised Evgeny Morozov isn't also tagged as a "digital dissenter" in this piece. Or Richard Stallman for that matter.

deleted 11y ago
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digi_owl 11y ago
RMS would probably resulted in a long rant about the inaccuracies of the term.

toadham 11y ago

I feel the arguments against old vs new tech or humanness vs automation are missing the point. A meaningful debate is the choice between supporting technologies that centralize power or those that distribute it. The notion that decisions are being made for the benefit of "machines" is nonsense. If that appears to be the case, it's likely for the benefit of those who control the machines. It's strange that free and open source software was not mentioned, since visionaries (albeit flawed) like RMS predicted the power shifts we see today.